So … I have questions about this rock theme …
Nelia to Joseph
Joseph to Nelia
Luke to Chris
Chris to Luke
Christina to Ramona
Ramona to Christina
Funny how it worked out like that
Luke to Aleah
Nelia to Joseph
Chris to Nelia
Christina to Luke
Aleah to Ramona
Ramona to Chris
Joseph to Christina
There are years where it seemed that this blog only existed for coordinating Christmas.
Well, we did a little better this year, but then it all kind of unraveled. And here it is, two weeks before Christmas, and this is the first organizational post. Oops.
So – here is the plan, as I see it. I’ll amend the post as people correct the plan, which is either keeping things simple or revisionist history. Your choice!
*** The editing has begun. Comments that no longer make sense will serve as guides towards reverse engineering the original post.
The plan
The activities
Christmas Eve gift
(GASP) We skipped this last year?   Well, Mom says I can have it this year, either by right or fiat.
OK, so we’re doing lots of games this year.  Therefore, the Christmas Eve gift will be white elephant.
Oh, no; not a white elephant exchange.  That would be far too pedestrian.  It has to be a white elephant. Or as close as you can get – white, or elephant, or near to both.  No price point, but this is just for fun, so keep it reasonable.
Not drawing names. Also, no wrapping.   If you want to do some decorative presentation, ok, just as long as the gift is not obscured. I have a game concocted for this, too.  Mild hilarity will ensue.  Prizes will be awarded (hint: they’ll all be whitish elephants!)
Christmas gifts
We are not drawing names this year.  Gifts for all the people!!  However, all the gifts are given jointly; ie, Luke & Nelia jointly get something for everyone individually.    Each family unit gets gifts for 4 people …. each individual ends up getting 2 gifts … urgh; I feel like I am doing this horrible job explaining this. Everyone knows what I’m saying, right?   I think this is what we did last year.
The food
Say which you’ll bring in the comments. I’ll attach names.
Standard lunch munchies:
Dinner – I haven’t decided how formal or informal this is.   Informal might be more relaxed and more fun. But there is something rather delightful about the formal dinner experience. Anyone wish to voice a preference?
Food
Drinks
Dessert
Well, this is probably going to be my last post on my diet. I thought posting here might help and maybe it did right there at first, but it isn’t really now.
Sadly I am following the same pattern I always follow. I diet and then fall off the wagon and eat enough to gain back everything I lost. The process used to take months. Now it usually happens very quickly.
They say that the brain has a set point for desired weight which is just a little more than you weight right now. It is quickly reset when you gain but when you lose it takes a year or so for the body to get used to weighing less and stop trying to gain it back. From personal experience, that’s the way it works for me. I am probably better off not trying to diet in the first place.
Yeah…. it’s depressing.
Still at it. Staying with the program most of the time. I did have a small chocolate lapse and I did eat a cookie which wasn’t all that good, fortunately.
I have no idea if I have lost any weight since I can’t step on the scale.
I keep telling myself that weight loss is not the primary goal; health is, but, of course, I do want to lose weight. I don’t need to lose all my excess weight. I know from past diets that I will feel better if I lose 50 pounds. This time I want to lose 100 pounds. I will still be fat even with a 100 pound loss, but I think I could manage so much better and that is enough.
I doubt if losing 100 pounds would make much difference in my ability to walk. I can’t even straighten my left knee any more. If I can’t straighten it after my weight loss, I can’t walk on it. I am taking some joint supplements and maybe that and eating better will make that much of a difference. Who knows. My chiropractor thinks it is inflammation and when we get rid of the inflammation it will be ok, but I have a feeling it is bone damage due to arthritis and I don’t think that will go away so easily. But if it is still this bad, I can, at that weight, have the knee replacement surgery. It would be so nice not to have to, but I am resolved that if I still need it, I will do it.
There is a therapy pool here. If I could get into it and, more importantly, out of it, I would join, or at least want to join. But they don’t have a lift to get me in and out and there is no way I could take the stairs. Maybe one day I can. I think a pool would do me a lot of good, though the chlorine won’t. That is the big drawback to pools – breathing and soaking in chlorine.
Ramona had me doing some upper body exercises… very mild ones I am sure. With nobody here to make me, I haven’t done any more. I am so out of shape, I should. I don’t think it would help me lose weight. It might help speed up my metabolism a little, but the thing it would do for sure is make me stronger.
I am kind-of down this morning. Does it show? Still…. 20 days in. In another 10 days it will be a month. That is a good thing.
I fell off the wagon (again), but I am back on. I started with Carrie on June 1 so it has been 10 days. So far I am doing OK… not fantastic, but OK. The one day I ate too many blueberries, I got back on track the next day.
Ramona is encouraging me to exercise. I need to, I know. Even in a chair you can do upper body exercises and I could do thigh lifts, just not much to do with my knees… though I guess a daily plan for moving my knees would be a good thing. I can’t straighten my left knee any more and I know if I had kept moving it, even without weight bearing, I would probably still have full range of motion.
One of the things I have run across in youtube videos is the claim that you can actually turn arthritis around with your diet. The main thing is no sugar or any empty carbs which I am doing. I keep thinking I should start taking the Shaklee joint support pills again. They have helped me in the past so I know they would do me good. There are a lot of supplements I should be taking and hope to do so soon. It’s going to take determination and right now I am concentrating on staying on my eating plan.
Well. We have finally, actually, verifiably closed on the ranch. It now belongs to someone else. It no longer belongs to us.
According to the notes in my calendar, there were 10 rescheduled closing dates, and the final closing was 2 months and 1 week past the initial date. These 67 days have been quite difficult.
There was just the surface difficulty of selling to people whose lawyer was very comfortable edging over to the gray areas of ethics. We were told this is perfectly normal for real estate, for them to put “are you actually an idiot?” clauses into their paperwork. Because maybe you actually are an idiot and would shoot yourself in the foot. And this is why we had a lawyer of our own. And it’s also why we were just sick of the whole thing after about the first week in.
Personally, I dislike the ‘sure, it’s unethical, but it’s not technically illegal’ style of doing business.
But there was also the emotional difficulty of digging really really deep into the GLO archives and doing all the legwork to run down the details of this deed and land survey all the way back to the 1860s. Because every new discovery was a “Happy would have loved this” moment. Before, there was no reason to chase down all the GIS folks in the office and ask if they were familiar with interpreting historical deeds. There was no reason to ask all my work friends if they knew anyone in rural real estate. The level of effort was certainly beyond what you’d do for mere curiosity. And yet, when we got to where we were over that steep learning curve, and were finding details … Happy would have loved all that stuff. And we would have loved sharing it with him.
It was hard enough just selling the ranch. The ethical irritation and research workload and emotional sucker punches did not help.
So … yeah. It’s sold. And we’re happy. But it’s not a perfect happiness.
Today I was thumbing through a color book and found a note from Aleah that this was the picture she wanted to color and to please save it for her. It made me smile and linger on that page.
It is still saved for you Aleah, and I hope someday you are able to color it. I would love to color with you.
The faire was a hit.
I should post photos, but it’s a pain to get them from the phone to the computer and I’m not really sure how to get them from the computer to the blog. So there are no photos.
But Eleanor’s dress was really lovely – green with puffy lace sleeves and a lace inset down the front. Looking, perhaps, an awful lot like this, in dark forest green and ivory.
We were going to do fully matching outfits, but with the ranch sale I didn’t get the fabric selections even started till super late, and Eleanor was resistant to trying on any dress that was not already lovely … so it was decided to just make a just-for-a-fitting dress a full dress (hers) and to make it out of things that we had at hand (dark green satin).
And as it turned out, speaking of things we had at hand, I have these simple green dresses that were the underdresses for my two more complicated outfits, and wonder and glory, they still fit. So I wore one of my green dresses, and then put all my chain mai`lle on because .. you know .. sparkly. But since I had jewelry, there was a raid to my costume jewelry box, and Eleanor picked out a wonderfully beautiful necklace too.
So we went. Rain, thunderstorms, cold and all that predicted weather aside.
We had a lovely time. Eleanor romped, she played in the dirt, she scuffed around in her lovely dress (sigh). We rented a wagon for her (good call!) and she sat in it and waved to the passers by as we went. She saw pirates and fairies and horses and goats and a mermaid and everyone was lovely to her. She played with lots of other kids, and they were all good kids too.
People complimented us both together, seemingly universally amused at the princess and her mother/lady-in-waiting trope.
People complimented my hair and my chain maille. One person, who worked at the chain maille shop, apparently (he talked to Joseph) recognized the style and knew who made it. That was cool.
The rain was tedious but not awful. The weather was a little cool, but we were all in layers and adequately prepared so that was no difficulty. The crowds were very light, possibly because of the promise of awful weather, so that worked out well.
And we picked up some fun stuff, had a delightful time, and Eleanor is still asleep.
Wooo!
I am so blasted tired of being this fat. Much as I appreciate being able to do so, I am so tired of scooting around the house in this chair. Maybe a knee replacement surgery would help, but weighing this much, chances are good that it would only make things worse.  Have you looked at how massive my knees and thighs are? No doctor, even a skilled one, would find it easy to work with that much flesh oozing around where he is working. The more a person weighs the harder the surgery is and the more chance that it would be a miserable failure. Also, the less time an artificial joint would last. My insurance would pay for one surgery but they are not going to be so willing to pay for another one if the first one fails or if the joint wears out in 5 years.
I have always been so resistant to people lecturing me or telling me what to do that it can actually make matters worse, but here is what might help. When you see me about to eat something I should not eat, just ask me, “Are you sure you want that?” Don’t tell me not to. Let that be my decision either way. But remind me to think. You could tell me you love me. “Mom, I love you. I don’t want you to do anything bad to yourself. Is that really something you want to eat?” Then if I decide to eat that cookie, let me. It is, ultimately, my decision.
I am getting rid of those chocolate chips. Luke thought that they were dark chocolate and would be ok, but they aren’t dark enough and I keep eating them anyway. I put them away, and get them out again. They aren’t too bad when eaten with more almonds than chips, but, still… It was embarrassing for you to see them there on the desk.
So what am I NOT supposed to be eating?
Anything sweet, particularly if it is sweetened with sugar.
Anything made with wheat flour.
Anything that is pure carb – rice, corn, potatoes, most fruit – unless they are in a mix with a lot of something else. Someday I will try to cut all the carbs, but for now, soup that includes potatoes and corn is still legal. Cornbread made with almond flour instead of wheat flour is still legal. Salad that includes dried cranberries is still legal. Mashed potatoes and gravy, hash browns, polenta, a bag of dried fruit, breakfast cereal, or fried rice are not.
Fat is OK on this diet. Butter or bacon is fine. (Toast is not.)
Beans are still OK, even though they are carby, because they balance the carb with lots of good fiber.
If you aren’t sure, ask me the question. I will tell you if it’s OK.
I need to be reminded that I am doing this for a reason.
Saw a motivational sign the other day. It said, “Don’t give up what you want most for what you want now.” It spoke to me.
Sugar and wheat flour mess with the brain. They are proven to be physically addictive. Sugar, they say, is more addictive than cocaine.
I hate being fat. I hate being a massive blob in this chair. I want to go outside without it being an ordeal. I don’t want to die early. I have so much to love for. I want to see my grandchildren grow up.
(yeah, that’s a typo… love instead of live…..  but I like it)
